Thanks for this quick reply !
It wasn't agreed on by the team, that's for sure, and I'll probably get heat for it since it's an
unprofessional announcement, but I felt personally responsible, saw your comment, and was
online, so fuck it. ^_^
It's good to know you're still taking this seriously.
This magazine was, is and will always be my baby. Sure it isn't covered in placental womb juice, but that doesn't mean I don't think of it as highly. Too many people in the Bitcoin community (Disclaimer: speech coming) are too busy obsessing about short term profits, people's intentions and agendas, and basically are just easily obsessed and blinded. (That's actually the reason I troll so much, to teach them a goddamn lesson
)
This magazine bridges the gap of information that no other entity or group in the Bitcoin community has been able to even come close to doing, and I'll tell you why. Everyone in our community to date, even the loudest mouths, have all preached about Bitcoin with a libertarian spin. Unfortunately, that doesn't just mean that non-libertarians will tune out, it means that non-libertarians become anti-Bitcoin.
The magazine is neutral. We will report the facts, even if it was that our magazine sucked. In fact, I'll be the first to write an article about myself if I had done the Linode hack (it'd be good publicity for the magazine in fact). When people see neutrality, they come to trust it. When people see extremists and conspiracy theorists, they put up their guard.
So in a sense, we're here to rescue Bitcoin, and not just with the magazine, but with numerous larger projects in the DCAO. The magazine is just one arm in the media direction. You guys will hear plenty about the other projects when it's time. I've done enough damage announcing the magazine 3 months before it was time and still haven't heard the end of it from our marketing director. This is how he greets me these days. "Hey Matthew. How's prematurely announcing things going?".
I have a few more questions if I may :
. I might be wrong, but as time goes on, the global cost of the project must be growing too, isn't it ? Unless you're working as volunteer for this (I don't think so ) !
It was all on me in the beginning. I was doing all the designs, all the ads, all the layouts, etc. Fuck, it was my shower-induced brain fart to even start the magazine in the first place (I wasn't satisfied with the exposure or limitations of bittalk.tv). That's obviously not scalable and my team got hungry too, so we restructured the workload (some big setbacks were involved with that too and we lost some time honestly). As for working for profit, I don't really personally care about the profitability of the magazine, I care about the reach and quality of it. The profits will handle themselves. That's why I bring in talented people who know when to tell me to stop talking, so that we don't lose money. In fact, I better get off here before they see me.
As for costs, I've been blessed enough to have backers for everything I have done since 13. For some reason people like to put their faith in the burning balls of energy that exist in the shape of human beings and can produce talented results at a rapid rate. Imagine that! All kidding aside, we're happy to eat losses while this thing takes off, but have no misconceptions of us going bankrupt. That does not give anyone license to stop supporting us though!
. Have you reached the 2,000 customers yet ? I would understand if you want to keep this info private, as business is business...
As much as I'd love to tell you exact figures and such, we simply don't have them yet, and even if we did, people seem to think just because I'm the face and even the founder, that I'm the only shareholder. Shareholders have meetings on things, create non-disclosure agreements, corporate operating agreement, revision policies, financial policies, budgets, privacy and disclosure policies, etc. Basically, I don't think I can say things like that on a forum even if I knew because someone in our faculty might have something planned. It might even be a surprise. Never know, and better be safe than sorry.
Maybe you should weekly update this thread with fresh news, to calm potentially paranoid people (like me !)
It's been discussed before, but frankly speaking not one of our dozens of colleagues are interested in posting every move we make on a forum hosted by our competition. If someone wants to know how we're doing (and in doing so, support us), they can always visit the site (which has an updated blog) at
http://bitcoinmagazine.co.uk.
Consider this thread a "major update" and "discussion" thread only. I wouldn't leave everyone in the dark of course, but I am probably never going to do a giant post like this one again. This is a special case that I think the supporters deserved a response, basically.